Franco Harris may be able to pick a wobbly incompletion from just above the turf, but he doesn't know how to pick his battles. His insistence on becoming the alpha Joe Paterno apologist rings with the dregs of denial: "He played such a minor part in this." Aaaaand now he's dragging JoePa's cardboard form to the Penn State season opener, conscripting the dead coach as a self-promoter. The reanimated two-dimensional Paterno appears to be sandwich-boarding a sign that reads "DUE PROCESS FOR PSU JVP." Presumably this is a call for Penn State to rewind the findings of the Freeh Report, which Harris has dutifully skimmed and which resulted from an investigation that Penn State itself ordered and financed. Harris should take a cue from the school itself and accept that there won't be a redo on this one.

Franco Harris read "most of" the Freeh Report (the stuff about the massive, program and…
Read more Read more

And regarding "due process" for Joseph Vincent Paterno? He's dead. He was a Catholic, meaning his soul has already been delivered to whatever Biblical force welcomes us to the other side of eternity. Unless editorial cartoonists have been fibbing all these years, we can assume that welcome committee was headed by Saint Peter, bedecked in a halo and a toga, kicking it behind a lectern. And the Saint must've asked Paterno, in a sing-songy but stern tone, whether those who abnegate their power to prevent the prolific rape of children should be allowed to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. And when Paterno stammered, and reflected on what he truly knew and could hide perhaps from himself but not from God, he would have understood that he had no good answer to the saint's question. That was the path that Paterno chose. Franco Harris may call for us to reconsider Paterno's legacy or some such. But we all know JVP has already been duly processed by a judgment none of us has the power to overturn.